


Brave Little Boy

by orphan_account



Category: Jurassic World (2015)
Genre: Crying, Hurt/Comfort, Mothering because he NEEDS it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 09:00:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6899611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His girlfriend can shut up and his dad can go to hell. </p><p>Because he's tired of it. Tired of everyone talking about. Tired of being angry. Tired of how different everything is. </p><p>He just wants it all to stop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brave Little Boy

If his girlfriend didn’t shut up, he was breaking up with her. Like right then. Actually, even if she did shut up, he probably still would. Had her voice always been so...grating? 

She was telling people again. Bragging about things that had happened to him on Isla Nublar. Like it was some badge of honor for her now that he was internationally known for nearly dying along with his brother, aunt, and Owen. 

“And then he-”

“Enough,” he finally snapped at her, louder than he meant to be. His fist, clenched, had slammed down beside her, upsetting her lunch tray. She jumped and recoiled from him. Great. First day back and he was already scaring everyone. “Just stop, okay?” 

He barely whispered the last part. He wasn’t going to yell anymore. He had already scared Gray that morning when he yelled at his dad and he couldn’t do that to his friends. 

“Ah, come on,” his friend Tyson said, “We want to hear about it. Not everyday your best friend nearly gets eaten by a dinosaur and makes the news on, like, every news station in the whole damn world.” 

“Yeah.” Now Nick was joining in. “That was heroic shit, man. Maybe you should get a medal.” 

“Yeah, sure,” he rasped. His throat felt like it was seizing. “Whatever.” 

Pushing away from the table, he shrugged on his backpack, leaving his tray, girlfriend, and friends behind. He just wanted to go home. 

So he did.

He jumped when his mom walked into her bedroom where he was hiding out, burrowed in the oversized lounge chair, two hours later. Sniffling sharply, he wiped at his nose and tried to scrub the evidence of any tears on his face. He knocked off his headphones and shifted around uncomfortably as his mom looked at him with an expression that was angry, concerned, and relieved all in one. 

“Mom, I-” He stopped when she raised an eyebrow at him. “How did you find me?” 

She waggled her phone. “Locator app. Mom’s got skills.” 

She tossed the phone on her bed as she passed it to sit on the foot of the chair and lean against the back cushion so that she faced him. “Bad day?” 

Zach snorted and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, something like that.” 

His mom kicked off her shoes and pulled her legs onto the chair. Zach watched her with a slightly annoyed expression, then huffed and sniffled loudly again. If was stupid even trying to hide the fact that he had been crying. This was the woman who had been witness to him breaking down when he lost his favorite Hot Wheels car. She had seen him cry over dumb stuff before. “Want to tell me about it?” 

“No,” he told her, toying with the headphones in his lap. There were a lot of things he probably should tell her, but everytime he thought about actually verbalizing them, his stomach tried to turn itself inside out.

She frowned at him. He wished Gray hadn’t told her so much because it made it look like he was trying to hide something. Which he kind of was. But it wouldn’t have been as obvious if Gray hadn’t told her basically everything.

“All right. Care to explain the thing with your dad this morning then?” She asked, trying to keep her voice neutral. Their dining room had been witness to decibel levels that practically shook the walls over breakfast. She wasn’t sure who had been yelling louder, but Gray had careened out of the room with wide, terrified eyes to find her when they had started yelling. 

Zach shrugged. It shouldn’t have surprised his mom that they were butting heads. He had been watching both of them do it for years. “Dad was being a jerk to Gray.” 

Karen had been in the kitchen when it started, but she did not doubt that Scott had said something that started the argument. She had filed for divorce for many reasons, but one of the main ones was the way Scott treated her and the kids. “And it had to turn into an all out screaming match?” 

He looked at his lap, but she could see her son’s jaw clenching as he gripped the headphones harder. His hair was starting to fall a little bit onto his forehead, getting just long enough that she would need to start suggesting he cut it again. He would at least listen when she asked, unlike his brother. Probably because it was not cool to have mop hair after the age of thirteen. She reached up and brushed the fringe back, gaining his attention again. 

“Yeah, it did,” he answered, jerking away from her hand so that it was out of his hair. 

“Why?” She asked him when he went silent, pulling her hand back to rest on his knee. 

Zach looked back up at her, his eyes burning with anger. “Why do you think? He made a comment about how tired he was because Gray had woken him up last night.” His jaw clenched hard and his teeth ground against each other just thinking about it. “And that wasn’t even what made me mad. It was because Gray just looked so guilty about it and Dad didn’t say anything to make it better. He just kept talking about how he was going to be tired during his meetings and it was a day he was going to have to skip lunch for something and now he was going to be tired and hungry. Like it was Gray's fault that he was having nightmares. And I just...I snapped.” 

He glanced up at her with wide eyes. Every time he had an outburst over the past three weeks, he had always come down from his anger acting jumpy and retreated to his room. She thought his new hair-trigger temper scared him almost as much as it scared the rest of them. 

“You think maybe you over reacted a little?” She asked. “Not to say he didn’t deserve it. Cause I fully believe that he probably did.” 

"Yeah, but-" He stopped talking and blinked a few times as his eyes started to shine with tears. When he spoke, his voice was strained. “After everything was over on the island, that’s all I could think about. How many times we almost died and how Gray probably thought I hated him. I acted the same way all the time to him for, like, really stupid reasons. I don’t want him to think that Dad doesn’t love him because he’s being so mean.” 

Karen felt her heart clench in her chest. “You really think he thinks that?” 

Zach shrugged and shifted uncomfortably, curling in on himself a bit. “I mean, I kind of did. For awhile. Before I realized he was just like that.” 

“Oh, sweetie.” She felt tears start to burn her eyes. "Your dad loves you. He really sucks at showing it, but he does. We both do. When you were being mean to Gray, did you ever actually hate him?"

He pressed his lips together and shook his head minutely. 

"Your dad, he's not a very good communicator and you are allowed to fault him for that. You can get mad at him." She patted his knee and shook it a little. "But let's try to tone down the fireworks a little. Even if your father is being an ass."

Zach's face drew up into a small smirk. "You shouldn’t say ass." 

“Smart aleck.” Karen laughed and tousled her son’s hair. 

Just as she was pulling away, she paused and ran her hand over his hair one more time. His hair felt thick and greasy. “When was the last time you took a shower?” 

“I-” he flinched away from her. “I’ll take one tonight.” 

“Zach.” She knew he had taken some kind of shower after running around on the island because he had left their hotel bathroom scrubbed raw that night, but it had taken them nearly a week after they came home to get him back in the bathtub for another one. Gray had mentioned a waterfall jump, but it hadn’t made Zach cringe the way hearing about the mosasaur did. He had blanched at the mention of it and excused himself to go talk to Owen, who had been escorting them to the airport with Claire. She sighed and watched him hunker down behind his knees so that she could barely see his face. 

“Don’t look at me like that! I said I’ll take one tonight, okay?” He snapped at her, his glare just visible over the tops of his knees. 

She frowned, but let the subject drop. Frankly, the giant bags under his eyes worried her more than the no showering thing. She knew that he checked on Gray multiple times a night because she could hear him walking around. He was also there faster than either she or Scott could get there from the master and guest bedroom downstairs. He had to be getting some sleep though, but she doubted it was more than four hours a night. “Okay, but I’m holding you to it. Don’t want to be the stinky kid, do you?” 

Zach rolled his eyes. “Maybe it would make everyone leave me alone. Cause that would be, like, totally awesome.” 

“That’s why you left?" She asked. He had not been as forthcoming as Gray, but she thought it may have been because he didn’t want to worry her with the real details, the ones maybe Gray hadn’t noticed. 

"Mmh." He nodded. 

“Why don’t you want to tell them about it?” 

“Don’t feel like it.” 

“Well, why do you think they want to hear about it?” 

“Because they think it was cool.” 

“And you don’t think so.” 

“No. It isn’t. People died there. Aunt Claire’s assistant, the one she left us with, was picked up by a pteranodon and then eaten by the mosasaur. We knew her. I mean, I didn’t like her or anything, but we knew her, Mom. And she died.

"They want me to tell stories about how I saw it kill other dinosaurs, but, Mom, those were Owen’s raptors. He raised them and they were his pack and all but one of them died right in front of him. It would be like if we were killed in front of you. That’s how much it hurt him.

"We saw her kill another one in cold blood. Just-just flipped it over and broke its neck right in front of us. She killed it for no reason. And-and they want me to tell them what it was like to run from her, but it wasn’t like this big heroic story they are trying to make it. They want me to talk about it like you would rehash a football game play by play. I don’t remember half of it though. I just remember trying to protect Gray and keep him safe. But we kept running into dinosaurs. We were never safe. They think it was fun, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t fun or-or c-cool or what-tever they think. It was really scary. I was scared, Mom, I was so scared and-and Gray need-needed m-me and I didn't-” 

“I know you were scared, sweetheart. I know you were,” she whispered into his hair. “I know, but you were so brave, too. So brave. My brave little boy.” 

Even though he was too tall, too heavy, and too old, she pulled him into her lap like he was her baby again and he was clinging to her because the worst thing that had happened to him was that he had just fallen and scraped his knee. But this hurt worse. So, so much worse.

****  
An urgent buzzing woke him up. His face hurt and his arm was asleep, but he finally felt safe. It had been three weeks since he felt that way. Even when he slept in his own room, he was afraid he would wake up to a dinosaur eye right outside his window. Or that Gray wouldn’t be in his bed when get got up to check. The buzzing started again. He groped around for it in his lap, but his hand only bumped his headphones. 

“Here,” his mother said, pressing the phone into his hand. “Girlfriend alert.” 

Her close voice startled him. He sucked in a breath and sat up quickly. Embarrassingly, he was still curled in his mom’s lap. He leaned away until he fell into the empty spot beside her, pressing his face against the cool, cushioned arm of the chair. “Don’ want t’ talk to her.” 

“Really? That’s a first. Zach Mitchell, turning away the attention of a pretty girl.” His mom was making a joke, but it just reminded him of how different everything was now. She paused a minute and then patted his leg as she stood. “Hey, do you feel like going to the school to pick up Gray with me?” 

He had planned to go back to the school just in time for him to get Gray and meet his mom out front. The school ratting him out really hadn’t crossed his mind until his mom came home. He had just wanted to get away. Had needed to get away before he did something stupid. 

“Yeah, I’ll come.” Sitting up, he stretched and then scrubbed at his face. The dried tear tracks made his face feel tight and itchy. His eyes felt puffy, but hopefully Gray would buy that he was allergic to something at the school. He had to at least look like he was holding it together for his brother. Even if it felt like he was in pieces half the time. “Hey, mom?” 

She stopped halfway to the door and turned around. When he didn’t say anything, she came back to stand in front of him. “What is it, sweetie?” 

“Don’t tell Gray?” He asked quietly, looking at his feet. “Please. I don’t want him to think I can’t protect him.” 

“Oh, Zach, he knows you will always be there for him.” His mom held out a hand for him and he took it to pull himself up. 

"But if he knows I can't handle it-" He stopped and and took a deep breath. "I just don't want him to know." 

"Okay. Our secret." She wrapped him up in a hug and he sagged against her a bit. 

Sighing, he pulled back and fiddled with the headphones so that he didn't have to look at her. "Thanks for not getting mad...about the school thing." 

"You're welcome, sweetheart." She wiped at the corner of his eyes. “Come on, let's go get your brother."


End file.
